ABSTRACT

Existing scholarship on Sister Wives has focused on how the Browns use consumer consumption, gender, post-feminism, and the banality of everyday life to endear themselves to viewers. Sister Wives is simultaneously a reality television show and part of something eternally consequential and holy for the Browns. Much of the support also suggested that the Brown's acceptance-via-Protestantization strategy was working. The Browns, were a rather typical Apostolic United Brotherhood family, though they are a far cry from stereotypical media depictions of Mormon polygamists. Headlines like "Sister Wives Daughter Heartbroken by Rejection from Mormon Church" appeared in celebrity gossip magazines like In Touch. Given the profound challenge it presents to traditional American Protestant imaginations of the family, it is easy to assume that polygamy was the primary reason for early Mormon persecution. The Browns are aware of the long history of Mormon persecution. The Browns' tactics rely heavily on what religion scholars sometimes refer to as the "good religion/bad religion" paradigm.